1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a registration and authentication of computing devices using device recognition technology. More specifically, the invention relates to the registration of a computing device using a user-selected fingerprintable device externally accessible to the computing device to generate a digital skeleton key, and the authentication of a computing device or a user of the computing device using the digital skeleton key.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional registration process for a computing device, a server will receive a user-selected password to associate with a user account. Later on during authentication, the server will ask the user to reproduce the user-selected password. The computing device is authenticated when the user-selected password is correctly reproduced. However, a user of the computing device may forget the password. To make the password easier to remember, the user may choose a password which is not very strong, such as those which contain words or numbers that are associated with the user, or have a limited number of characters. In such a case, the password may be easily discovered by hackers on the Internet.
In the alternative, if the user creates a very long and complex password, the user may be forced to write or store the user-selected password on a document either in virtual (computer file) or physical (paper) form. This can lead to the loss of the user-selected password, or the theft of the document. Again, these would be undesirable outcomes.
A device fingerprint of the user's computing device has also been proposed as an alternative to the user-selected password. In such a case, the device fingerprint of the computing device would replace the user-selected password. The device fingerprint would provide a stronger password than the user-selected password since it can be composed of various characters which are not associated with the user. In addition, the device fingerprint could be composed of a larger number of characters than the user-selected password since the user would not have to memorize the device fingerprint.
However, in the case where the computing device is shared by many users, use of a device fingerprint as a password may be undesirable since a different user may access the user account by virtue of being granted access to the computing device. While the number of users with access to the computing device may be limited, such potential access may still be unacceptable for security purposes.
Thus, there is a need for improved technology for registering and authenticating a computing device.